far right

Members of the United Kingdom Independence Party must be rubbing their hands with glee today. They're the subject of the day's leading news story. The Education Secretary has described them as “a mainstream party”. The Leader of the Opposition has effectively defended them. They are being portrayed as victims of discrimination, despite their own discriminatory policies.

Sayeeda Warsi, co-chair of the Conservative Party, was last night (3 May 2012) brave enough to note a link between the BNP and UKIP. She pointed out that UKIP candidates are standing in areas where the BNP had previously stood, implying that they can draw on the same sort of support.

The recent horrific terror attacks in Norway seem to have been occasioned in part by the rise of fearful far-right movements which use Christian language as part of their guise. The answer to these should not be accommodation, says Simon Barrow, but an attempt to build robust civic alliances for social justice and against racism and xenophobia.

At least 92 people were reported dead in Norway, after a bomb blast and shooting spree on 22 July. There has been an outpouring of sympathy across the world for the victims, many of them young, and their families, and horror at this atrocity.

UKIP is generally treated as respectable and fairly mainstream, while the BNP is demonised. But is there really much difference between them? I decided to compare their policies and found that they were even more similar than I expected.